Thursday, November 13, 2014
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Pilgrim
You Might Be a Pilgrim If:
56 Ways to Identify an American Post-Camino Peregrino in Withdrawal
1. Goodwill will not accept your used hiking boots.
2. You carry toilet paper, extra-powered Ibuprofen, and Compeed with you at all times.
3. You wash your socks with shampoo.
4. You have a fantastic tan…but only on your left side.
5. You have seen Pablito‘s special rock.
6. You fear cyclists.
7. You routinely approach reception desks and ask if the hotel is “complete.”
8. You hear that Alanis Morissette song in your head when you take long walks.
9. You can say “hello” in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, English, Dutch, Korean, and Aussie.
10. You are secretly a little bit in love with the Singing Nun of Santiago.
11. You wash your underwear with shampoo.
12. You either have or are contemplating a scallop-shell tattoo.
13. You’ve engaged in hour-long poncho vs. rain suit debates.
14. Folgers just doesn’t cut it anymore.
15. You can pee anywhere, and you don’t really care who sees.
16. You can pack everything you need for a 6 week trip in 10 minutes or less.
17. Your most prized possessions are field-tested socks and underwear.
18. The yellow arrow is your GPS.
19. You wash your face with shampoo.
20. Whenever you go to a restaurant, you look for the Menu de Peregrino, and you can’t understand why the wine isn’t included.
21. You hoard plastic bags and diaper pins.
22. You can take a shower in 4 minutes…using only shampoo.
23. You can dry yourself off completely using a tiny ShamWow towel.
24. You’ve whittled your wardrobe down to 2 of everything.
25. You know how to say “medicated wipes,” “blister,” and “hemorrhoid” in Spanish.
26. You know and understand the many varieties of jamón.
27. You measure distance in K.
28. You only own clothing that dries really fast.
29. You walk into bars and ask for a stamp.
30. You can’t decide whether your scallop-shell tattoo should be the modern blue-and-yellow signpost one, the arty Logroño one, or the cool Navarrete one with the cross in it.
32. You know to avoid the ensaladilla rusa.
33. You know to order the Ribera del Duero in Burgos, the Mencía in Villafranca del Bierzo, and the Albariño in Portomarín.
34. You wash your dishes with shampoo.
35. You do not bother to ask for tomato, mayonnaise, or lettuce on your sandwich.
36. You don’t care much about “things,” but if anything happened to your framed compostela, you’d freak out.
37. You’ve had the best conversations of your life with people who walked beside you for a single hour.
38. You love pulpo, but only a la gallega.
39. You feel like a winner when you find a free electrical outlet at bedtime.
40. After telling yourself you will never eat another tortilla españolaas long as you live, now it’s all you want…as long as it is recién hecho.
41. When you check into a hotel, you ask if there is “weefee.”
42. You do not underestimate elderly Aussies, ever.
43. You want to hug John Brierley. You want to punch John Brierley.
44. The love you feel for your hiking boots is not natural.
45. You got a hug from The David. And then another one.
46. You think the Salvation Army bell guy is a donativo stand, but he doesn’t seem to be offering any snacks.
47. You are astonished when restaurants open for dinner at 5pm.
48. You know the difference between tapas and pintxos.
49. You’re never too hungover to walk.
50. When you rinse out your Pilgrimwear, the water turns black.
51. When you sit down to lunch, you immediately take off your shoes.
52. You keep turning up the “C” knob in your home shower, but the water does not seem to be getting any more caliente.
53. You can really hold your vino tinto.
54. You wave your hands around in dark bathrooms and wait for the lights to come on.
55. You’ve been to the “end of the world.”
56. You know that anywhere is within walking distance, as long as you have the time.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Virtue
The Church often speaks of sin. Perhaps we have been guilty too often of morbid obsession in this regard. As often as not these days, on the other hand, it seems that the Church speaks too little of the reality of darkness. In both cases, the Church seems unable to speak with much inner authority or vitality: the weary have walked away; the darkness laughs, and breeds.
Only through the total embrace of love, absolute self-offering for the sake of all people, and the humble pursuit of virtue, to be able to give ourself away in love, have we any hope of delivering light and life to our human family and to our world.
God, give us your Spirit, that we might love.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
2. The president of the assembly “verbally instructs” the congregation and “exhorts to the imitation of these good things.”
3. Prayers of intercession are offered “for all others in every place.”
4. The Christians “salute one another with a kiss.” (Note, O pagan: no orgy involved.)
5. “Bread and a cup of wine mixed with water” are “brought to the president of the brethren.”
6. The president “offers prayers and thanksgivings” over the bread and cup “according to his ability.”
7. The people respond to the prayer by saying “Amen” which, as Justin says, means “so be it.”
8. The people partake of the bread and the cup. Justin explains at length that this food which is called “the Eucharist” is “the flesh and blood of Jesus,” who told us to do this, calling the bread His body and the cup His blood. (Note again, O pagan: no cannibalism.)
9. “To those who were absent a portion is sent by the deacons.”
- Severe theological errors are pervasive in the church.
- The church is known as a “pastor-eater.”
- The congregation experiences severe conflict.
- Hardly anyone in the community knows the church exists.
- The church is declining while the community is growing.
- The church is “family owned and family operated.”
Friday, September 12, 2014
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Sunday, September 7, 2014
1. They are converted.
2. They have been equipped, not entertained.
3. Their parents preached the gospel to them.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Monday, August 18, 2014
Sermon on Proper 11
20 July 2014
The heart of the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds would seem to be that we multiply evil when we try to identify evil and weed it out. This is the central point, but the explanation for how we arrive at that conclusion will require that we are willing to look with new eyes at this challenging, and I think commonly misunderstood, parable.
Typically, we read this gospel text as a verification of the ages-old perspective that bad people will get punished in the end. Is that what Jesus is teaching us, though? Does the death dealing god that is so common in our judgment narratives faithfully agree with the God that Jesus reveals to us, the God who is Love? I think not, and I will endeavor to explain why God’s judgment is different from what we normally understand it to be.
How does Matthew present judgment language and imagery? What insights can we gain from considering how he presents the teachings of Jesus regarding judgment?
The dramatic judgment scene in today’s gospel is not easily read with the God who is Love in view if we stick to the conventional interpretation. In our standard reading, the death dealing god of our darkest fears looms large, and we inevitably experience a frisson of excitement because that god is going to consume all the “bad” people of the world, especially all the people who have wounded us or those whom we love. The problem with that image of God is that you and I are inevitably the “bad people” of someone else’s narrative, and they are feeling that same excitement at the prospect that we are going to be consumed by flames. You see, our language and imagery of judgment recasts God as the monsters out of our deepest, darkest selves, calling to mind the “monsters of the id” of ‘Fantastic Voyage’ fame. If you recall that iconic film, those monsters destroyed their world, leaving it a desert.
One verse for understanding judgment in Matthew's Gospel is found at 11:12: "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force." Jesus uses the conventional language of judgment, but turns it upside down through metaphor and points out that the kingdom of heaven is represented most clearly through those who are suffering violence and yet refuse to reciprocate. Another example for understanding Matthew’s use of judgment language can be found in the parable of the Wedding Banquet for the king’s son, in which the man without the proper wedding gown is thrown out in the darkness where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth". We can easily see that Christ uses this parable to foreshadow his own crucifixion, identifying himself with the man who was thrown out in judgment. The most important use of judgment language and imagery is to be found, of course, in the crucifixion itself. We may interpret today’s gospel in the larger context of Matthew's use of judgment imagery, in the light of the
crucifixion and of the other parables, wherein Jesus becomes the one whom we declare to be the judged 'of God', and who himself suffers the fires of judgment.
Let’s look more closely, then, at the parable of the Wheat and Weeds. In the narrative, the crucial verse is 13:42: "and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Who does "them" refer to in context? In a more conventional interpretation, we typically assume that the "doers of lawlessness" are the ones who are thrown into the fire by the angels after having their scandals exposed. Look, however, at 13:41-42 again: "The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." The text allows, and I would say points out, that we may read this parable rather as identifying the angels of the Son of Man as being the ones who are thrown into the fire where there is a weeping and gnashing of teeth in penalty for having exposed the scandals of the evildoers. In verse 42, “they” are the evildoers, and “they” throw “them”, the angels, into the fire because their lawlessness has been revealed.
The self-righteous violence that we visit upon each other is the very evil that is judged by the Son of Man, suffering on the cross in order to expose our lawlessness. With the cross in view, how then do the angels gather the weeds? Do they do it through walking amongst the wheat with scythes and use violence? No, judgment is rendered by refusing to return the violence that is the inevitable result of exposing lawlessness. The angels are judged to be weeds, but their trust in the God who is love highlights what the life of the kingdom is actually all about, and clearly shows what does not belong to the life of the kingdom. By allowing themselves to be judged by evildoers, and to be thrown into the fire as the Son of Man first was himself on the cross, the angels offer their witness (martyrdom) of the judgment that the evildoers pass upon themselves, whose violence shows that they are in fact the weeds.
Remember the story of the three Hebrew men thrown into the fire in the book of Daniel? It was only after they had been thrown into the fire that the glory of the Lord was revealed, a glory which also revealed the bankrupt and corrupt judgment of our human kingdoms. It is often only in the fire that the righteous will shine. If we do read the "angels of the Son of Man" as those martyred in human fires of judgment, then they are also the resurrected righteous who shall someday shine like the sun.
This is admittedly not a conventional way to read this parable. I think, though, that it is faithful to the story of salvation in that we see Christ as suffering the judgment first for us; not God's judgment, but, in the terms of the parable itself, our human forms of judgment that multiply evil and end up identifying ourselves as the doers of evil, who have murdered the Son of God.
We rush headlong to bloody judgment and execution. God rushes headlong to give us mercy and grace. Matthew's Jesus tells us how God works, quoting Hosea 6:6 "For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings". Jesus repeats this teaching regularly: "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have come to call not the
righteous but sinners" (Matthew 9:13); and, "But if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. (Matthew 12:7)
In the parable of the Wheat and Weeds, and throughout the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is teaching us that our habit of condemning the guiltless and using any form of violence to pass judgment on others must be unlearned and ultimately overthrown by learning God's mercy, grace, and love. We only perpetuate the very evil that we seek to destroy when we become judges. The Son of Man and his angels sift out the kingdom precisely by suffering the fires of human judgment willingly and without returning violence. This parable shows God's judgment on our human judgment. It also shows that we are given the blessed assurance that we will know mercy and grace through suffering violence if we will not return that violence. We are given the blessed hope of the resurrection, if we are willing, with Jesus, to allow God to use us as witnesses to the life of the kingdom.
Amen.